pjbogart wrote:Strangely enough, neither The Daily Caller nor Media Trackers seem interested in keeping their readers up-to-date on this story that caused so much hyperventilating for the last three days.

I wonder how Kyle Wood faked the beating? Once my drug-crazed neighbor threatened to beat herself in the face with a cellphone, then tell the police her boyfriend did it. These weren't nice people. They were one reason we moved out of Wil-Mar.

Media Trackers regrets that we were repeatedly lied to and misled. We regret that our readers were subject to the dishonest claims of a dishonest individual. Despite the best efforts to verify the accuracy and integrity of certain claims, a cover-up sometimes works. Those who create and maintain such fabrications deserve to be ruthlessly exposed for they hold the power to destroy the credibility of innocent people.

They don't regret anything that they themselves did; they just regret that Kyle Wood lied.

Westsidegal wrote:Ann Althouse should be ashamed that she trumpeted this trash on her blog to her rightwing suck ups.

She expressed her suspicion of it being a hoax from the very beginning, as did many of her commenters.

If Ann Althouse "trumpeted this trash" then Isthmus "trumpeted this trash". Should Isthmus be ashamed? How about The Cap Times?

ADDED: Westsidegal (whoever you are), you are, in fact, guilty yourself of what you wrongly accuse Althouse of doing. And you are, from your pseudonymous hideout, defaming and smearing a real person's reputation. Read again her twoposts on this incident.

You owe Ann Althouse an apology.

Last edited by Meade on Tue Oct 30, 2012 8:55 am, edited 2 times in total.

I agree that Althouse was prescient in her first post about this, when she speculated that it might be a hoax.

Her second posting was somewhat less skeptical. She referred back to her previous post, but then added this:

Ann Althouse wrote:This is an extremely disturbing story [...] If these really are texts from Pocan's partner, we ought to know more about the whole context. Maybe these 2 men have been exchanging playful texts that would make this material feel more like joking.

The first bunch of commenters on that second post mostly do not appear to have believed it was a hoax; for the most part they treat it as real.

Althouse was not the only person to initially suspect the story might be a hoax, but then start treating it as real once a couple of days had gone by. I noticed the same pattern at a couple of other conservative sites.

I'm no fan of Althouse -- she seems rather unpleasant, and is pretty reliably right-wing on most matters -- but I don't have a real problem with how she handled this story. I would argue that if you suspect a story's a hoax, it might be better not to publicize the story at all, rather than publicizing it along with a note suggesting that it might be a hoax. But that's just me.

I do think she could do a better job of reining in the craziness of her commenters. There are lots of ways of setting the tone for one's comment section. I am not sure whether she actively likes the fact that the comments on her blog tend to be vicious, reactionary, and dishonest, or whether she doesn't particularly care.

The idea of spreading a false story by saying you doubt the veracity of the story is a well-known propaganda technique. As you can see by her readership, most of the dogs salivated in the expected way. This is why journalists used to be trained not to believe such stories, and not to print them without some basis in fact. It doesn't absolve Althouse of anything, and it proves she's got no character if she printed this story with doubts about its veracity.

Anyone who has ever raised a teenager knows about this kind of twisted accountability. "I regret this guy duped our readers" is not the same as "I regret we didn't do the work to verify this story before we published it."

Any second semester college newspaper editor would have handed that story back and asked for verification. In order to publish it, you have to be not just devoid of discretion, you have to be willing to be easily misled. That's an interesting place to live when you claim to be better than the lamestream media and devoted to fact-based reporting.

Isthmus' first story on this topic reported what the police knew, how the Lee campaign responded, stated that Wood couldn't be reached and added some stuff we learned about Wood in a story about Madison Mormons.

I just read Althouse and she appears to do much of the same, minus any new information. My only beef with her post is that she calls the Media Trackers report a "conversation." Media Trackers isn't a forum or message board. Unlike Althouse herself, Media Trackers didn't present the text messages as a question meant to be discussed, but as fact. Unlike Isthmus and every other legit, professional news outfit working this story, this Brian Sikma character actually had access to Wood and never, anywhere, reported that his story was challenged or even minimally verified. He was being a stenographer.

jjoyce wrote:My only beef with her post is that she calls the Media Trackers report a "conversation." [...] But it wasn't a conversation.

Jason, perhaps you can get over your "beef with her post" if you bother to read it again carefully. Althouse referred to it as a "text conversation" and a "texting conversation". You are being deceptive by dropping those modifiers and then complaining about a quote that you yourself deceptively take out of context. It's worse than a straw man argument. Modifiers matter, no? Unless you think there is no difference between a man and a straw man.

Now, why would you do that, Jason?

I suspect it is because you have a need to manufacturer "a beef" with a blogger you simply do not like and apparently don't read with any real understanding.

Donald wrote:The idea of spreading a false story by saying you doubt the veracity of the story is a well-known propaganda technique. As you can see by her readership, most of the dogs salivated in the expected way.

Too true. No less an honest broker of all that is factual and true than Glenn Beck did this stuff all the time.